


To kill a snake

by JenCforCarolina



Series: Eyahn [14]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Eyahn - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: The only way to be sure is to get close enough to slit it's throat.





	To kill a snake

Eyahn’s mouth tastes like bile, but she holds her cold gaze firm. Drifter twirls a locket, fused shut, the green of deep old growth forests, and wound with a snake. She watches it like a raptor, does not worry about the ferocity in her eyes. He thinks it is charming. He thinks it is in line with his.

* * *

“Pawned my Gjallarhorn.” He tested her once, absently, after a match where she resorted to using hers, and she wanted to draw three of her knives and rip a set of perpendicular scars across his face. But he took her silent fury for indifference, and grinned.

* * *

“No one keeps better secrets.” Ada tells her. Ada, somehow along the twisted way, became the closest thing to a confidant Eyahn has ever had. All she has given Ada are looks of plain disdain in his direction, through brick walls. And now that she has formed a plan, she has not even given those. “If anyone has a poker face to rival his, it is you.”

* * *

With Cayde gone, she has to build her own network. No Vanguard to lay the path for her. Ada is her consort. So close by, and Eyahn’s work with the armory no secret any longer, it isn’t strange for her to make frequent trips there. Ada sends information to Shaxx through encryptions built into files disguised as experimental crucible weapon blueprints. Shaxx, well known and fond of giving gifts, sends the data to Ikora, buried in the file metadata of love poems. It is already more people than she would want in on the mission, but it is necessary. Too few and the trail would be obvious.

* * *

No one told her what Gambit was or was not. She saw a training ground, heard high praise and competitive challenge. She ran three matches, and felt something under her skin, in the back of her mind. She raised the matter silently while sitting on Shaxx’s shoulder, showing a rifle won from a victory. “Shoddy.” He had said with a growl, she nodded in agreement. “Keep an eye on that for me, would you? Let me know if something fishy begins.”

“It already has.” She had replied, but had no proof. So she carried on.

* * *

Auburn disapproves. “It’s darkness.” She says. “So much. You have to feel it? I can feel it when you come back, it’s like a static. Can’t you stop?” But Auburn understands the duty Eyahn carries, for Shaxx, and relents. Still, it aches to see her auntie so concerned when they are together.

* * *

Eyahn wears a young Hunter’s cloak. Drifter knows she’s old, has already told her she’s the oldest he’s locked into Gambit. “Most ‘o them your age think they’re too good for this. You know better, that's why I think I might like you someday.” But the young cloak has a snake on it, she figures she has to look the part, hopes maybe it pleases him. It’s not her usual Shadowsmith gear, but it is camouflage all the shameful same. She no longer meets Saladin’s eyes.

* * *

She can’t tell Auburn. To honest, too open, too Titan. Her cover would be blown in a heartbeat. Not even the slightest hint, the barest warning. Auburn cannot have any evidence of the charade. One more secret from her auntie, another to the pile. It feels taller than she is, now. And this secret dwarfs the rest, because it wears a mask, and that mask is betreyal. 

* * *

But Cayde is gone. The Shadowsmiths are scattered with the other hunters in fear of his mantle. She did not run, is not afraid of respinsibility. No one beleives she would make a good Hunter Vanguard, except Hawthorne, who has threatened twice to elect her if she doesn’t stop climbing above her alcove and alarming Louis.

_To defend the Consensus and the City from threats within..._

There has been no mission more directly in her jurisdiction than this one.

* * *

Late at night, she turns against Auburn again and again. The Titan finally sits up, and pulls her close, asks what is wrong. 

“Love me?” Eyahn asks.

“Forever.” Auburn vows.

It is enough for her to hear it, and though Auburn does not yet know, Eyahn draws the knife on their relationship. One day, maybe, she will be forgiven. 

* * *

She watches the locket, and on the backswing draws a blade -hunter’s knife with it’s long groove- and hooks the chain, yanks it from his grip. She flicks it into the air with a flourish, snatching it up in her other fist and staring him cold-dead in the black eyes. He grins and she can see yellowed teeth, darkening gums, plain as day. The locket is too small for her to crush in her hand, though she faintly tries.

“Alright, alright, alright.” He drawls. “Let’s do this.” And through blank eyes and tight lips she imagines her knife in his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> None of my Guardians would side with shady trash man. But one may follow along to look for exactly the right moment to take out the threat.


End file.
